


Goodnight

by orphan_account



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Bittersweet, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hugs, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 07:37:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4383041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jared and Richard confess their feelings to one another, with their trademark awkwardness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goodnight

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first SV fic! And my first complete shippy fic, I'm pretty sure. Just a little one-shot, and mostly fluff. Safe for work, except for some cussing.

“Dammit!…” muttered Richard. He dug the bottom of his palm into his eye socket and tapped his finger on the desk impatiently. He nearly leapt out of his chair when he heard the door open.

“Hi! Sorry,” said Jared, shutting the door behind him. “I should have knocked. My apologies.”

“Oh. Jared. Hi,” said Richard, turning his head to acknowledge Jared. “…Jesus. _I’m_ sorry.”

“It’s OK,” said Jared. He smiled. “You must really be working on something involved!”

Richard yawned. “Oh God, not even,” said Richard. “I was just—I was playing this stupid, uh, Metroid emulator, and I—I fucking suck at it.”

“Oh…”

“God—I was supposed to be doing this to relax, but it’s stressing me out, like everything else.” Richard said. He rubbed his eyes. “I keep thinking of all the work I should be doing instead, and plus this fuckin’ sidehopper keeps—“ He grimaced. “I’m pretty sure video games used to be fun for me. Just—what the hell happened?”

“W—well, I can’t help you with your meteoroid game,” said Jared helpfully. “But I think it’s OK to take breaks once in a while, especially since you work so hard. Would it be helpful to brainstorm something else for you to do?”

“Metroid,” Richard said. “And maybe, yeah. Sorry, wait, did you want something? You…”

“Oh!” said Jared. “No, I just heard you in here, and I thought you might need a glass of water.” Richard noticed the glass that Jared was holding, rather uselessly.

“Oh, thanks,” said Richard. “Yeah, sorry to disappoint.”

“Disappoint?”

“’Cause you thought I was working in here, and—never mind. Um, you can just put it on my desk, thanks.”

Jared reached over Richard to place the glass on his desk, one hand on Richard’s shoulder for balance. He lingered there for a split second, stroking the nape of Richard’s neck absent-mindedly with his thumb.

“Oh! Uh, whoa,” said Richard.

Jared leapt back. “Sorry! I’m sorry,” he blurted. “Oh, God, I’m really sorry.” He winced—a full-body wince, as if tensing himself for a punch.

“No, no! It’s—it’s not—” said Richard as he stood. “It’s just—you gave me ASMR, for a second there.”

Jared straightened. “ASMR,” he said. “What’s—?”

“I—it stands for, uh, autonomous sensory meridian response,” said Richard. “Something like that. It’s um, it’s allegedly this weird neural phenomenon, when—where you feel tingles, like, down the back of your spine, usually in response to some kind of sensory stimulus.”

“Oh, right,” Jared muttered. “Right.”

“Yeah, I—the funny thing is, I used to watch videos, occasionally, that were meant to trigger ASMR… I would use it to calm down,” continued Richard. “But it—it’s been awhile since it’s been triggered, you know, by ‘real life.’” He laughed—albeit a bit uneasily—prompting Jared to do the same.

“What is it like to experience ASMR?” asked Jared.

“Um… it’s this—kind of fuzzy sensation? I dunno,” Richard said. “It’s like Morgellons; it’s just some dumb pseudoscientific thing the internet made up. But it does feel pretty cool.”

“And it’s triggered by touch?” said Jared.

“Well, I mean, not always. Everyone has different things. Weird things, sometimes, like crunching ice or the dentist’s office,” Richard shrugged. “But mostly, it’s caused by, like… someone walking you through something, or getting a massage, or a haircut… anyone paying, like, close attention to you, or helping you.” He cleared his throat.

“And for me, it’s when I get—when someone touches my hair or the back of my neck, you know, in a certain way. Like—” Richard continued, hesitantly. “…Can I?”

“Uh, sure,” said Jared, blinking compulsively. Richard approached him and, staring at a point on the wall just beyond Jared’s shoulder, stretched his arm cautiously out to touch the base of his neck. He stopped short as soon as he felt his fingertips brush against skin, but, with some effort, managed an awkward caress. He withdrew his hand slowly and looked down, shuffling his feet. “Did—” he said, hazarding a brief glance in Jared’s direction. “Did it work? Did you…”

“U—um,” Jared stammered. Richard was trying to avoid looking at him at all—this was already weird enough without eye contact—but he was pretty sure Jared’s face was turning pink. Jared was usually Skeletor-pale, and seeing him blush was sort of like hearing your mom swear for the first time.

“I mean—” Jared went on. “It felt… nice—”

Richard tore his gaze away from the floor, and he was met by a starstruck, owl-eyed look from Jared. God, he really did have freaky eyes, Richard thought. They were the kind where you could see a sliver of white sclera just below the iris; Richard remembered reading that there was a word for that in Japanese. _Sanpaku gan,_ or something. That kind of eye had the tendency to look a little spooky, especially to someone as eye-contact-averse as Richard, but even he couldn’t deny the neotenic, almost alien appeal. No wonder sanpaku eyes were so prevalent among anime protagonists and Disney princesses—and, Richard reminded himself, Disney princes, too.

As it happened, Richard had been embroiled in a heated debate about Disney princes just the other week. He and three other founding members of Pied Piper got drunk and/or high (two drunk, one high, one drunk and high) and a rash of inane Buzzfeed quizzes like Which _DuckTales_ Villain Are You? and Which Pair Of Overalls From _Clarissa Explains It All_ Is Your Spirit Animal? prompted them to discuss each other’s animated counterparts.

Dinesh had resignedly claimed Aladdin before anyone else could say it. Erlich had been matched to the Beast from _Beauty and the Beast_ ; he had protested this comparison until he was shown a picture of the Beast after turning back into a human, at which point he declared “This is acceptable” and took another bong rip.

The gang had wavered on Richard’s patron prince, at first likening him to Bambi before settling on the gangly British guy from _101 Dalmatians_ —though neither character, as Richard pointed out, was actually a prince. Gilfoyle chose another non-prince for himself: Belle, the other half of _Beauty and the Beast._ This prompted Dinesh to laugh uproariously and ask if this meant that Gilfoyle was willing to jump Erlich’s bones, to which a supremely high Gilfoyle replied “No” and _“Fuck_ no” and, somewhat egregiously, “I shit on your rigid gender norms, street rat.”

When Richard asked which prince Jared would be, Erlich blankly responded “Who’s Jared?” and it took him, by Richard’s estimation, a full minute to remember.

“I think—” said Richard, in his too-loud drunk voice. “I think he looks like the guy from _The Little Mermaid._ Prince Aaron.” He stifled a burp. “Eric.”

Gilfoyle pulled up a picture of the princes in a lineup. “Uh, not really, man,” he said. “He looks way more like that, uh—that creepy fuckin’ necrophile from _Snow White.”_

Richard scoffed.

“No, no, he’s right,” cut in Dinesh. “He’s got, like, that same rotoscoped, uncanny-valley kind of look.”

“A real-life human can’t be uncanny valley,” said Richard dismissively.

“Uh, no, there’s _definitely_ something off about Jared,” Dinesh said.

“Yeah, he’s weird,” Gilfoyle agreed.

 _“Guys,”_ said Erlich. “Who the fuck is _Jared?”_

Richard rolled his eyes and took another swig of beer. It tasted bitter. He had reached the point of the evening where everyone else was already hammered; he would have to match them bottle-for-bottle if he wanted to have any fun. Richard hated how he had to endure dry heaves and hangovers just to keep up with them. He wished Jared hadn’t turned in early so he could talk to somebody sober.

As he traced the mouth of the bottle with his index finger, he heard Dinesh tell Gilfoyle that Monica would make “a way better Belle.”

“Shut your slanderous mouth,” deadpanned Gilfoyle. That was the last thing Richard remembered hearing that night.

Anyway, that’s what went through Richard’s mind in the three seconds before he kissed Jared Dunn.

 

 

⁂

 

“Uh—uh, oh my god,” blurted Richard. “Um—”

“No, don’t worry about it!” said Jared. “Really.”

“I’m not gay,” Richard hastened to clarify.

“N—no, who says you have to be?” said Jared. “You can be bisexual, or pansexual, or even demis—”

“Stop! Stop,” said Richard. “I’m not—I’m not any… word. I don’t know, this is the first…”

“No, OK,” said Jared patiently. Richard started to pace around the room, dragging his hands down his face and across his lips. Jared took the (now lukewarm) glass of water from the desk and offered it to Richard, who guzzled down a good third of it in one go. He handed it back to Jared, and Jared set it back down.

Richard wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Thanks,” he murmured. As soon as he caught sight of Jared’s soft, concerned expression, he started twitching and rolling his neck in a futile attempt to alleviate his discomfort. Then he was back to pacing again.

“Richard, it’s all right,” said Jared. “We don’t have to talk about it—we don’t have to mention it again if you don’t want. I get it, you made a mistake—”

Richard stopped pacing and wheeled around, biting his thumbnail. “OK, but see, I _didn’t_ make a mistake,” he said. “I, like—I wanted to do that.” He paused and ran his fingers over his hairline. “I think I’ve been wanting to do that. I—What’s wrong with me?”

Jared swallowed, and his eyes were shining. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said.

Richard smiled weakly. “Sorry to, um—” he said, after a brief pause. “…surprise you like that.”

“Yes, I—I maybe would have appreciated some prior notice,” said Jared.

“I’ll be sure to warn you next time.”

Jared’s face was now entirely red. “Next time?…” he muttered with a hesitant smile.

Richard, breathing heavily, looked over at him. Without a word, he half-stumbled, half-lunged toward Jared. He kissed him clumsily, desperately, clutching Jared’s arms as tight as he could.

He pulled away. “Um, I’m going to kiss you now,” he said. “So.”

“OK,” said Jared.

“I was—I probably should have said that about two seconds ago,” said Richard.

“I know. That’s fine,” said Jared.

“Sorry,” Richard mumbled as he drew in closer.

Neither Jared nor Richard was a good kisser. Richard was too insistent, too urgent, and he never knew what to do about his teeth; Jared’s kisses, while tender, were too slow, drawn-out, and a little more chaste than the situation required. But neither noticed, or if they did notice, neither cared. Probably the former.

Eventually, they came to a stop, but they kept holding each other.

“So, can I assume the feeling is mutual?” said Richard—a nervous attempt at sarcasm.

“Extremely,” answered Jared, and the corner of Richard’s mouth twitched.

“Good. That’s good,” he muttered. “But—hold on, how can it be extremely mutual? Like, there aren’t degrees of mutual, are there? Is it a comparable adjective? Um—” Jared moved his palm in a circle on Richard’s upper back. “Sorry,” said Richard.

“No, you’re fine,” Jared reassured him.

“It’s funny,” said Richard after a while. “This is, like, the first time I’ve ever felt really nervous around you.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jared, and he meant it.

“It’s all right,” said Richard, and he meant that too.

For a while, both of them were silent. They swayed very slowly in each other’s arms. It felt like the last dance at prom (Richard assumed). Jared, resting his chin on Richard’s shoulder, stroked the back of his head, sending a familiar tingle down Richard’s spine. He exhaled, and a relieved chuckle escaped his lungs as Jared kissed him on the temple.

“S—uh, so how long has this been going on?” Richard asked. “I mean for you, with me.”

“A while,” said Jared, amending: “Most of the time I’ve known you.”

“Jesus,” breathed Richard.

“I’m sorry. I would have told you,” said Jared. “But I didn’t want to complicate things.” He stepped back, loosening his hold on Richard. 

“Wait, Jared, why—…”

“You said it yourself. You haven’t had time for a relationship in over three years. And now, with Pied Piper trying to get off the ground, it’s probably even less of a possibility,” he said. “I don’t—I don’t know if a relationship with me is something you ultimately want, but either way, it’s probably best that we end it here. Before…” He shook his head. “Richard, I don’t want to interfere with the amazing thing you’re trying to build here.”

Reluctantly, Richard let go of Jared. “God,” he said, staring at the floor. “The things we sacrifice, huh?”

“I don’t see it as a sacrifice,” Jared insisted. “Whatever the nature of the relationship, I’m happy just to be there with you, to be there _for_ you, helping you, watching you innovate, a—and fight, and persevere… That’s enough for me.”

Richard stared at Jared uncomprehendingly. Jared just gave him a wan, heartfelt smile and a tiny nod.

“…OK. OK, no, you’re right,” said Richard. “We can’t do this.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know. I don’t know! This is all kind of…” He made a feeble head-exploding gesture.

Jared patted him on the arm. Tentatively, he let his hand curl around Richard’s bicep (or lack thereof; Richard wondered if there was a word for that part of the arm that wasn’t an incorrect back-formation of an anatomical term). Richard sighed and rested his head against Jared’s chest.

“Can we—can we just have tonight?” Richard muttered. “I mean, just this. Just, us standing here, and—” He took a deep breath. “Can we stay like this for a while?”

“If that’s what you want,” said Jared.

“It is,” said Richard. “Yeah, I think it is.”

And they did stay like that for a while, Richard leaning against Jared and hooking his arms around him, Jared playing idly with the stubborn little curls on the top of Richard’s head.

Richard’s mind was still filled with faint, constant noise—anxieties and distractions and connections and trivia, gears grinding in his perpetual emotion machine. He liked to compare his brain to the telescreens from _Nineteen Eighty-Four;_ he could lower the volume, but he could never turn it off.

Yet, in this moment of (relative) respite, he felt like his bedroom had lost its moorings from the rest of the house and floated away into some lonely dimension, where time didn’t flow, but rather seeped. He hugged Jared tighter. Hours had passed.

 

 

⁂

 

Jared fluffed the pillow and turned it over a few times before placing it gently under Richard’s head. He pulled the sheet over Richard and smoothed it with his palm. “All set?” he said.

With a big yawn, Richard nodded. “…Thank you.”

“Sure,” said Jared. “I’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight if you need anything.”

“OK,” said Richard, wrinkling his nose as Jared gave him a peck on the forehead. Jared smiled and descended the bunk bed’s ladder. “Goodnight, sweet prince,” Richard murmured as an afterthought.

Jared stopped in front of the door. He looked up at Richard with a bemused grin. “Goodnight,” he replied, and left.

Richard rolled over and fell into an immediate, peaceful sleep. It was his first good night in years.


End file.
